Medical providers prepare to play catch up

As clinics began to open their doors Thursday, area medical providers had one thing in common: preparing to play catch up.

AMANDA HICKEY Daily News Staff

As clinics began to open their doors Thursday, area medical providers had one thing in common: preparing to play catch up.

Jacksonville Children's and Multispecialty Clinic had to reschedule more than 500 appointments at their 10 locations due to closing early Tuesday and remaining closed Wednesday, according to Dr. Madhur Mittal.

Within 15 minutes of opening the doors of the Childrens Sick Clinic and Urgent Care Office Thursday, 11 appointments were scheduled. Other offices, Mittal said, remained closed due to the weather.

Mittal said managing the medical clinics and the weather is pretty challenging.

 You've got to worry about the patients and the sick ones and the over anxious ones Those are all the challenging things. Our management team has been working around the clock I don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of phone calls have been made, probably thousands, he said.

Mittal said it required extra preparations to re-open on Thursday.

 It was quite challenging. You had to find someone to dig the snow out of the parking lot, he said.

By 9 a.m., the clinic was seeing patients trickle in and the phone was ringing regularly.

 I think they're glad we're open, Mittal said.

Amy Sousa, spokeswoman for Onslow Memorial Hospital, said that by Thursday morning some departments were beginning to return to business as usual.

Radiology and the laboratory were open as was the Emergency Room, and some staff had been on hand since Tuesday.

 A lot of staff is used to that because of our hurricane history kind of camping out I guess, Sousa said.

The hospital, she said, has had to reschedule hundreds of appointments throughout its departments.

 That's not an exaggeration to say that hundreds of appointments were affected and some of them were rescheduled for today so Radiology has people coming in today after noontime so they're trying to catch back up. Almost all of the patients that had things canceled or postponed were contacted and they were trying to reschedule them for today or Friday or next week, she said Thursday morning.

SurgiCare, one of OMH's clinics, had to reschedule about 35 surgical procedures due to the weather, according to director Pippa Taylor.

 These have all been elective (non-emergency) procedures, mostly cataracts, colonoscopies and ENT, she said.

About 90 percent of those were rescheduled to be done within the next three weeks by late Wednesday.

Taylor said that the appointments are coordinated between the surgeon's office and schedules, which the clinic plans to accommodate with extended hours if needed.

 All staff and surgeons are acutely aware of the inconvenience and frustration this can cause, but the safety of our patients and staff is always our main concern, Taylor said.

Onslow Ambulatory Services Manager Scott Beaver said that about 300 appointments were rescheduled at the hospital's physician practices due to the snow storm.

 We should be able to catch up within a couple of weeks, Beaver said.

The weather has also affected the donated blood supply, according to the American Red Cross.

According to Autum Mimh, director of communications for the organization, more than 600 blood drives were canceled across the country, including some in Eastern North Carolina.

 That's resulted in more than 20,000 uncollected blood and platelet donations, she said.

The exact numbers of local cancellations was not available at deadline. Mimh said the Red Cross is working to reschedule the appointments and encouraging ENC residents to make a donation at drives near them.

Scott Brooks, owner of Brooks Funeral Home in Morehead City, said the business was fortunate to not have services scheduled during the midst of the storm.

 We did as the storm started, and we were able to complete those services without any mishaps or reschedules, he said.

The funeral home had to reschedule one service, he said, because it was out-of-state and the local family could not travel to the site.

 We had plan A and plan B on what we would do and we were able to go ahead with all the planned services that we had, he said.

Brooks said that the weather was also kept in mind while scheduling services.

 We had some services to schedule and postponed them by a day or so to make sure that we weren't planning anything right in the middle of the storm and the following days, he said.

Brooks said that while the weather could affect burials, it does not affect memorial or funeral services that do not proceed to burial.

 Everyone's very understanding that we're not equipped in this area to handle (snow and ice) so we always have a plan B just in case and all the employees and families that we're working with to coordinate is very understanding. Everybody works together to make things the best they can be, Brooks said.

Judy Sanderson, superintendent of the Coastal Carolina Veterans Cemetery, said that the cemetery did not have any services scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, which is out of the ordinary.

 God watching over everybody and everything, she said.

Sanderson said that Eastern North Carolina is lucky because it takes several days, she wasn't sure how many, of single-digit temperatures for the ground to freeze and cause problems in burials.

 With the equipment that we have, it wouldn't have a bearing, she said.

However, had services been planned, the cemetery would check with area funeral homes about if the families wanted to reschedule.

 If not, then every effort would be made to get in there and take care of it, Sanderson said.

Amanda Hickey is the government reporter at The Daily News. She can be reached at amanda.hickey@jdnews.com.